We’ve received lots of fantastic feedback on previous editions of HeadLines and, more importantly, even more contributions. Thank you all. Welcome, then, to our bumper fifth issue of HeadLines. There’s some sad news in this one as we pay tribute to Roy Thomson who, amongst many other things, was chairman of the Friends of the Library. We’ll miss him terribly.

If I were to classify this issue of HeadLines then these would be my headings: Discovering Stuff (lots of records, and more to come with museums and art); New Stuff (several new databases, some through our collaboration with all other HE institutions in Scotland); Relaxing Stuff (poetry, art, reflections and a talk, contributed by staff and students); Buildings Stuff (we couldn’t wait for our own new library to be built so the staff bought one instead!); Responsible Stuff (a really really easy hands-free way to save power); Scary Stuff (library rules of yesteryear and a Blitz); Helpful Stuff (those of you needing help can now “chat” to us, and those with lots of publications under their belts will soon have somewhere to gather them all together) and, finally, Humorous Stuff – and I bet most of you will click that link first! Back, by popular demand, is mair Doric fae wir ain Wendy Pirie – our very own one woman rival to Flying Pig Productions. Enjoy, and keep your suggestions and contributions coming. We’d love to see more from those of you who use our museum collections, for instance.

17 members of staff were locked in the Queen Mother Library for a week late last year…OK, so it’s not as bad as it sounds! Two teams of 10 and 7 respectively were given the chance to transform their routines using a process called KaiZen, developed by Japanese company Toyota, which allows staff an intensive week, known as a ‘blitz’, to analyse current methods and create more effective and efficient ways of working together.

Inmates were treated very nicely by Facilitator Pat Browne and HR’s Dave Cumming; with copious cups of tea and coffee, plenty of confectionary to fuel the frenzy of flow diagrams, and were even allowed out occasionally to gather information, ideas and opinions from the many other people involved in the processes.

The first group to try this innovative approach was selected to represent the library teams involved in getting your books onto the shelves; from Acquisitions, to Cataloguing and Floor staff.

Team Leader Robin Armstrong Viner tells us a little about his experience:
“Our Blitz was brilliant because it was those of us involved in making new material available who got to decide how the process should be improved. Chris [Banks, University Librarian] showed enormous faith in committing to implement our new process. We were able to question the goals she had set us as she explained the thinking behind them.Consulting our colleagues involved in the process was part of the Blitz and gave us an understanding of what we needed to achieve. It was great working with such an enthusiastic team with such fantastic ideas. We were able to implement some of them the next week. Others will take longer, but all will have a positive impact on the service we offer.”

The next Blitz, for Utilities, aimed to cut staff time on bill-processing and meter reading by 40%, and to raise awareness of issues of cost, carbon and consumption across the whole university community, with a team drawn from Estates, Finance, Policy Planning and Governance, as well as an Environmental Champion from QML thrown in for luck (ie. me, Georgia; your friendly HeadLines helper!). Management targets were exceeded spectacularly, with staff time savings of 66% and 88%, giving opportunites to put valuable hours into other important projects.

Personally, I was incredibly impressed with the wealth of knowledge and experience, and also the effort and enthusiasm of all of the team members, and at the willingness of staff across the university to contribute and cooperate in the consultation stages. Fantastic progress was made, although there’s still plenty of work to be done to raise awareness of the issues at stake.

We await the results of the third Blitz, in Registry, with anticipation.

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I consider myself to be relatively conscientious when it comes to energy consumption, turning off my lights and monitor when I leave my room to attend meetings elsewhere on campus and sometimes irritating other colleagues by turning off their lights as we leave their rooms – sorry but it’s a reflex action!

DIT has recently rolled out power management of classroom PCs and have demonstrated significant savings as a result. I asked to test the system for my own PC. It’s simple: DIT added me to a “list” and, if I’m away from my PC for more than half an hour the PC goes to “sleep”. A quick jog of the mouse or tap of the keyboard and it wakes up again. Now, given that I was already turning off my monitor I didn’t expect there to be significant savings. Wrong! This graph for the first month shows a staggering 50% energy reduction.

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Gweed sake, thir needin poetry noo!! Weel thi’ll hae tae dee without. A’ve nivvir bin able ti mak stuff rhyme: weel nae maist o i time!. 

Bit ah thocht yi mith bi needen tae ken mair aboot at new libray – er’s still a greit hole in i grun bit thir startin tae big stuff noo in a. I cran is massive – yi kin seet fae Split i Wins: ah dinna funcy bein i mannie thit drives t tho – yi’d hae an afa clim in i mornin, in is fir “comfort breaks”….!!

Bit onywy, thiv begun ti plan far athins gaan inside i new libray. Turns oot it thi kin pit maist o i stuff its hiviest ust on i fleers lower doon: at wy it’ll bi quaiter up it i tap. Jist lik Embra Uni, thir gin tae hae funcy placies on ivra fleer for fowk ti work igither: so er’ll bi nae shushin in at bits! Bit thir expecin thit it’ll be quaiter ower it i back o ivra fleer in a: er’s rooms ere thit yi canna spik in it aa. Er’ll bi sumbidy tae gie yi a haan fin yer stuck – ye’ll git them on ivra fleer ower aside i lifts, aside faar i printers n copiers’ll be. If yiv yer ain laptop yi’ll bi able ti use i wifi, in er’ll bi ordinray computers in aa. Thir plannin ti hae a puckle o diffrent kines o seats, so yi kin sit up richt, or flop aboot tae suit yersel. It’s gin ti be afa graan!

Standard English Translation

For goodness sake, they need poetry now! Well, they’ll have to do without. I’ve never been able to make stuff rhyme: well, not most of the time!

But I thought you might need to know more about this new library— there’s still a huge hole in the ground but they’re starting to build now as well! That crane is massive— you can see it from Split the Winds (ed.s note: between Powis Place and Powis Terrace, as you travel north–west from George Street) I don’t fancy being the man that drives it though—you’d have an awful climb in the morning, and as for “comfort breaks”…!

But anyway, they’ve begun to plan for everything that’s going inside the new library. Turns out they can put most of the material that’s heavily used on floors lower down: that way it‘ll be quieter at the top. Just like Edinburgh Uni, they’re going to have well-designed places on every floor for people to work together, so there’ll be no shh-ing in those areas! But they’re expecting that it’ll be quieter over at the back of every floor as well: there’ll be rooms there that you can’t speak in at all. There will be somebody to give you a hand when you’re stuck: you’ll find them on every floor over beside the lifts, next to where the printers and copiers will be. If you have your own laptop you’ll be able to use it with WiFi, and there will be ordinary computers too. They’re planning to have a mixture of different kinds of seating, so you can sit upright, or relax as you please. It’s going to be very grand!

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The University’s new Research Information System, PURE, is due to be launched in 2010. PURE will replace our existing publications database AND will display other information on research-related activity held in other University core systems. PURE will also be the place to capture information about other research activities such as:

• Research outputs (including, but not limited to, publications)
• Projects at the conceptual stage, or those that do not have funding
• Professional activities and awards, outreach and knowledge exchange
• Statements relating to the impact of work – for Research Councils and later for the Research Excellence Framework (REF)

PURE will allow related activities to be linked together to build up an overview e.g. a publication to a project; researchers to a project; impact statements to a publication, projects to other projects (and later to intellectual property).

PURE will also be fully integrated with our Institutional Repository, AURA. This will enable you to upload the full text of publications (or other research outputs) for inclusion in AURA at the same time as recording those publications. It is being designed to help us with our preparations for the Research Excellence Framework and raise the University’s research profile.

We will be offering training and information sessions on PURE in 2010 and details will be forwarded to Colleges about this in due course.

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John Bisset Chapman (1875-1949), a graduate of Aberdeen, spent much of his career as HM Inspector of Schools for Lambeth. However, he formed friendships and acquaintances with many of the leading members of the London literary scene such as Aldous Huxley, Walter de la Mare and H. E. Bates.

Keith O’Sullivan, Senior Rare Books Librarian discusses both the man and the remarkable collection that resulted from his literati links in this Friends of Aberdeen University Library Spring talk, entitled An Inspector called: John Bisset Chapman and literary Britain.

This presentation will take place on the 9 March 2010, at 7.30 pm in the Regent Building lecture theatre, Regent Walk, on King’s Campus, as part of the Museum Evening Lecture Series. All are welcome, and light refreshments will be provided after the talk.

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The Public Catalogue Foundation, a registered charity, is cataloguing all oil, tempura and acrylic paintings in public ownership in the United Kingdom. The aim of the project is to make these works of art more accessible to the public. The PCF have been publishing colour catalogues on a county-by-county basis since 2004, with each catalogue containing item-level records and digital images of the artworks.

The catalogue for Aberdeen is currently being created and Shona Elliott, the Assistant Curator (Collections) of Marischal Museum, is working alongside a professional photographer and the PCF County Coordinator to create and collate photographs and data for the University of Aberdeen’s collection of oil and acrylic paintings. Over four hundred such artworks are owned by the University. 

The PCF intend to put all images and catalogue information online in the future. 

For further information, please contact Shona Elliott (s.elliott@abdn.ac.uk).

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The number of records in our library catalogue passed the one million mark on Friday 18 December 2009 when we loaded over 136,000 records for Eighteen Century Collections Online (ECCO). Now anyone wishing to view the full text of these rare and unique materials will find a deep link to each individual title in the catalogue so once you’ve found the item you’re looking for there’s no need to search again.

Improving access to ECCO has only been possible thanks to the generosity of the Friends of Aberdeen University Library who made a substantial contribution towards the cost of the records. We are also grateful for the support of our colleagues in DIT’s applications team based in the Queen Mother Library, who were responsible for uploading the data.

Our catalogue continues to grow daily as new records for the latest material are added and existing records are updated. And the millionth record - it’s A letter to Sir George Saville, Bart. upon the allegiance of a British subject: occasioned by his late bill in Parliament in favour of the Roman Catholics of this Kingdom.

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In response to requests from our users, changes have been made to the Library Management System to enable booking requests to be made for Law Heavy Demand Reference materials.

This heavily used material is available for consultation in the library for 3 hour slots while the library is open. Previously the material was available on a first come first served basis but from the 1st February our readers are able to book an item up to 3 weeks in advance.

Bookings can be made from the Library Online Catalogue (OPAC):

1. Using the quick search screen find the item you wish to consult. 
2. Click on “Copies owned/out” and at the next screen click on Booking Expand to open  the Advance Booking screen.  
3. Click on Requests for the time slot you would like to book.
4. If the number of booked copies = total number of copies, then all copies are booked for that slot. 

Although the system will allow the reader to make up to 6 bookings, only one item can be issued for a particular time slot.

Time slots are:
Monday – Thursday and Saturday: 9.00 -12.00; 12.00-15.00; 15.00-18.00; and 18.00-21.00
Friday: the last slot of the day is 18.00-20.00
Sunday: the first slot of the day is 13.00-15.00

Please note that if reserved items are not collected within 30 minutes of the start of the booking slot then the request is automatically cancelled.

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In December the website of the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) was included in the Guardian’s list of 100 best websites.

BAILII is hosted in the UK by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and has been at the forefront of endeavours to make legal information readily and freely available.

The website provides access to British and Irish case law and legislation, European Union case law, Law Commission reports, and other law-related British and Irish material. There are 76 databases covering 7 jurisdictions with data from a variety of sources including free to air sites, published and unpublished CD-ROMS and direct and indirect feeds from courts, government departments and other organisations.

You can find BAILII at www.bailii.org

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You can now get full text access to materials in the Lyell Collection. Created in 2007 to mark the 200th anniversary of the Geological Society of London, it is described as one of the world’s largest integrated collections of online Earth science materials. It brings together important journals, Special Publications and Society book series in one platform and provides a rich source of authoritative information for researchers and students in Geology, Geography and Engineering.

The full text access to key book series and conferences from the Geological Society series will be particularly useful. The Society’s flagship Special Publications are available in electronic format from Volume 1 onwards, with all new volumes being posted slightly ahead of their print publication date.

More detailed information on content is provided online. The collection can be searched from http://www.lyellcollection.org/. You can browse individual titles/series from this page but we recommend using the Advanced Search option (top right hand corner) for more effective and targeted searches across the collection.

If you would like help and instruction on how to use the Lyell Collection please contact me, Susan McCourt, or speak with Brenda or Helen on Floor 2 in the Queen Mother Library.

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We now have electronic access to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and Institution of Engineering and Technology (IEEE/IET) Electronic Library (IEL), providing access to almost a third of the world's current electrical engineering and computer science literature. IEL features content from IEEE and the IET and will be of great value to researchers and students across a wide range of disciplines including Engineering, Physics, Computing Science and Medical Sciences.

This high quality resource includes full-text access to more than 140 journals and magazines, as well as transactions and proceedings from over 900 conferences. Backfile content is to 1988 with some selected content back to 1893. Over 2,000 approved and published IEEE standards are also available through the service.

Titles included in the IEL service are being added manually to the library catalogue. However, they have already been activated in the electronic linking service,SFX , allowing full text links from other databases such as Web of Science and Scopus.

Want to know how to use the database? There are tips and short self-paced online tutorials available online and library staff on QML Floor 2 are also available to help you get the best out of this new and valuable electronic collection.

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Cross search the full text of over 2,000 essays from the prestigious Oxford Handbooks in Business & Management, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion. In-depth, specially-commissioned content by leading scholars and editorially-selected and created links to a range of related online resources.

Access to this collection is available to members of the University at www.oxfordhandbooks.com for a trial period until 02 April 2010.

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In Spring 2008, the music department joined forces with Aberdeen Art Gallery and the British Library to bring a priceless manuscript of keyboard music by the English composer William Byrd to Aberdeen.

Dating from 1591, My Ladye Nevells Booke is one of the few sources of English keyboard music to survive from the sixteenth century. It contains 42 of Byrd’s pieces, copied by John Baldwin of Windsor; most exciting of all, there appear to be corrections in the hand of the composer. The manuscript was put on display in the art gallery, and became the focal point for a series of recitals and lectures culminating in the annual conference of the Royal Musical Association.

The manuscript was also the subject of an honours course offered to our music undergraduates. They were given unique first-hand access to the manuscript itself by Dr Nicolas Bell of the British Library.

In the future, though, the manuscript will be freely available to all in digitized form:  it has just been added as a ‘virtual book’ to the British Library’s online gallery. This will allow us to run the course again in the future, as well as proving to be an invaluable research resource.

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Keith O’Sullivan, Senior Rare Books Librarian was contacted by the Press & Journal in January following the discovery of a 237 year-old newspaper in her home by a local pensioner. The 1773 copy of the Aberdeen Journal and North British Magazine, a predecessor title to the modern Press and Journal, was found by Mrs Dorothy Robertson in her wardrobe as she cleared out her house in Garthdee. Mrs Robertson has now donated the newspaper to the Press and Journal offices on Lang Stracht. The four-page weekly is dated May 10, 1773 and has no illustrative matter, but is filled mostly with notices of sales of land. Keith said the paper was a valuable find.

The University Library has a copy of every issue of all versions of the Press and Journal since the first edition of the newspaper appeared in December 1747, making ours probably the most comprehensive run available in Scotland. However, copies from the eighteenth century, especially ones in good condition, are becoming increasingly rare.

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Revealing the Hidden Collections, a collaborative digitisation project across nine Scottish university museums, funded by the Scottish Funding Council, and led by the University of Aberdeen, is improving electronic access to museum collections through the creation of collection-level descriptions, item-level records, and digital images. These records will be made available through the Culture Grid, a national cultural database being developed by the Collections Trust, the Museums Libraries and Archives Council, and the European Commission. The Culture Grid will serve as the UK’s contribution to Europeana, an even larger database which brings together select digital content from museums, libraries, and archives all over Europe. 

The project is taking advantage of recent advances in digital information management and technology. Museum records will be delivered to the Culture Grid through the Open Archive Initiative (OAI-PHM), by which information will be harvested directly from the separate university databases. This allows for long-term sustainability beyond the duration of the project itself, as newly accessioned items or updated collection information in individual databases will automatically be added to the Culture Grid. Additionally, the project received a grant from Museums Galleries Scotland to assist with the purchase of desktop video-conferencing software and webcams to enable the widely-spaced partners to meet without frequent journeys.

The initiative is now well underway, with Project Officer Amy Miller co-ordinating the many facets of the scheme. Amy was previously an Information Assistant at the Queen Mother Library Issue Desk. Mary Sabiston, formerly a Collections Assistant at Special Libraries and Archives, is responsible for writing the collection-level descriptions and item-level records for Aberdeen’s collections.   The project is led by Dr Alan Knox, Project Director, and Neil Curtis, Project Manager.

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Special Libraries & Archives hold a wealth of twentieth century material relating to social and political movements for democracy, equality and justice. Papers, literature and correspondence survive to chart the activities of local political parties, trades unions, pressure groups and activists.

Aberdeen played its part in the radical politics of the twentieth century. There were publishers like James Leatham, active Labour and Communist party organisations and numerous trade unions, with a central Trades Council organising matters. Aberdeen activists joined the 1926 General Strike and during the Spanish Civil War nineteen men fought against Franco’s fascists. Aberdeen groups have also been involved in post-war national protests against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the introduction of the Poll Tax.

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SHEDL, the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library, enters its second year with three new e-journal deals for 2010. Through Scotland-wide collaboration the Library can now provide University of Aberdeen staff and students with electronic access to virtually all journal titles published by Oxford University Press, Edinburgh University Press and Berg. That’s around 120 additional titles!

SHEDL has also reached an agreement to participate in Portico from 2010, which is a not-for-profit service which preserves e-journals and other e-content from many publishers and is able to serve this content to participating libraries under certain circumstances, effectively insuring us against potential loss of access to electronic material, eg. through participating publishers going out of business, large scale IT failure etc.

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The Serials Union Catalogue for the UK has made a significant improvement to its service with the addition of over 20,000 links (with many more to follow) to journals’ tables of contents (ToCs), by using information provided by ToCs service Zetoc. These links appear on the search result screen, and at the top of the display for the full record and a quick click will lead you directly to the most recent issue of a journal, making it faster and easier to find more information about periodicals held in the 70 libraries available on the SUNCAT service.

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In a file previously catalogued only as “Administration – Rules 1862”, Collections Assistant Laura Castle has rediscovered some of the more authoritarian Library regulations from yesteryear, giving us a fascinating flashback into a life of Victorian academia. Here's a selection...

1. Strangers visiting the library must be admitted by the servants through the side door only, and cannot be allowed to ascend the library staircase unless accompanied by a College servant, a Librarian or Professor.
2. No person can be permitted to take the books out of their place on the shelves, or, in any other way to intermeddle with them. [Ed.s note: Laura especially loves the use of the word ‘intermeddle’ !]
3. Part 1: Any person wishing to consult books in the library must be admitted to the Reading Room by the side door, and the book or books acquired must be brought to him there by a Librarian.
   Part 2: The name of the consulter and of the books which he uses for consultation shall be entered in the reading room book. And he shall be responsible for the book until their return has been… [text obscured] in the reading room by a Librarian.
   Part 3: Until better accommodation for consulting books shall have been provided the librarian shall exercise discretion as to the books of plates and valuable books to be allowed in each case for consultation.

Other rules included:

• No looking at the library catalogues without the consent of the librarian.
• Some books were allowed out for no longer than 2 weeks, while others were not permitted to be borrowed at all.
• The annual inspection “shall take place at the close of the winter session, and shall in ordinary circumstances, be finished within fifteen days” .
• A fine of 1 shilling per volume was imposed for late books.

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Part of the evidence was a sketch of a steam engine made in 1810 and believed by the owner to be an early work by Hornblower; a similar image later appeared in the Pantologia (1813) of Olinthus Gregory, friend of Hornblower. But Dr Marsden was able to discover that the sketch was actually a copy from an earlier printed work edited by David Brewster. Dr Marsden was also able to ascertain the sources of other text and images in the manuscript by consulting rare works in Special Libraries, and this confirmed to him that the manuscript was not the work of Hornblower but a set of student lecture notes taken at the University.

An image of a ‘Newtonian Reflector’ was helpfully signed and dated 'William Watt 1810' and further investigation in the Special Libraries & Archives Reading Room ascertained that one William Watt, of Banff, was a student at King's College between 1806 and 1810. The image attribution confirmed that the manuscript was a set of natural philosophy notes from Watt's third year of study taught by Robert Eden Scott, Professor of Natural Philosophy, and that the archives actually have a near duplicate copy of notes from another student who attended Scott's class and dated 1807-1808 (reference MSK 287).

Dr Marsden explains further:

“Special Libraries staff brought me some lecture notes from a similar time at Aberdeen University … I found they were almost identical. A quick check of the class lists for our colleges indicated that there was a student in one of the nat phil classes by the same name - which clinched the issue. The owner is pretty overjoyed, and has now very generously agreed to send over the MS so that it can be digitised for our collections, and perhaps put on display … It was actually rather a fun bit of detective work!”

Richard O. Byrne was delighted to have the mystery resolved and wrote:

“It took 25 years of poking including a visit to Lord David Gibson-Watt in Wales ... to finally talk to the right person who could unlock the mystery of the 307 page manuscript ... Dr. Marsden’s rather impressive knowledge of early 19th-century technology and its related literature is to be admired and cherished by your University. The manuscript needs to be shared or find a new home where it will benefit from more than my curiosity.”

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The title which informed James’ recent purchase is 'The Sickert women and the Sickert girls: Walter Sickert with Therese Lessore, Sylvia Gosse, Wendela Boreel, Marjorie Lilly, Christiana Cutter', published in 1974, for an exhibition at the Parkin Gallery in London’s Belgravia. He discovered the catalogue in the University’s collections when investigating the career of artist Christiana Cutter.

James tells us:

“I have a small art collection which I save up to add to. I was researching regarding an oil painting of Lincoln's Inn Fields (where I used to spend lunchtimes sometimes) by Christiana Cutter, probably circa 1913/1917 when she was trained by a friend of Sickert, and have decided to buy the picture, which is in the Camden Town Group (1911-1913) and Post Impressionist style. I spend a lot of time with my mind on art… the Bloomsbury Group (Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, Dora Carrington and circle) and Camden Town Group (Sickert, Grant, Gore, Ginner, Lamb, Manson etc.) being of particular interest”.

The Sickert women and the Sickert girls... can be found on Floor 4 in the Queen Mother Library at shelf mark p759.42 Sic.

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For the past few years many sections within the Library have chosen to give donations to a charity rather than send each other Christmas cards. The appearance in this year’s Oxfam Unwrapped catalogue of a specific “build a library” package prompted the decision to join forces and donate to one, very appropriate, charity.

Such was the generosity of staff that we collected £678.00, much more than the library package cost, meaning we were able to add several literacy, teacher training and book packages to our donation.

Now if only paying for our new library building were so easy…

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As some of you may already know, there is now a team of magical book brownies who live in a little box on the library homepage, and love to help you with all manner of biblio-bewilderment. Say you’re sitting in your room, brain congealing like day-old porridge while you wrestle with that urgent essay, but don’t know how to access an electronic resource; or you need to know when the Reading Room is open; or have to renew a book but the catalogue doesn’t seem to let you… Who you gonna call? Not ghostbusters, no.

Actually you don’t need to call anyone if you have internet access (although you always have the option to phone, and even talk directly to a human being if you prefer...).Just go to www.abdn.ac.uk/library/, scroll down to the bottom of the page to the little box in the right-hand corner that says “Quick Query” and type your question. Press enter, and ping: one of our lovely library staff will send you a reply within minutes using an Instant Messaging service from Meebo. This service has been extended and is now available Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm during term-time.

It’s simple, fast and helpful, and if you have a complex question that needs more than a quick fix we’ll direct you to one of our many resident experts for more detailed help.

Go on: ask a librarian!

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After being in the library for ten or so hours (give or take, counting breaks), it feels like you know - or should get to know, the people around you - those who have also been there for an extended period of time. Welcoming smiles are exchanged when you enter or leave the room; empathetic smiles are shared when you catch someone’s eye. You become accustomed to mannerisms: a cough, a stretch, a sigh. As people begin to lose their inhibitions, heads on desks no longer look strange or lazy, yawns are no longer rude: they are communally agreed to be unremarkable. The same is true on long haul flights, in cafés, or when a group of strangers are collectively confronted by unusual behaviour.

About eight hours into my sojourn, I started thinking that I knew those around me. Indeed we had, in a way, spent the day together. I then remembered that I didn‘t know anyone‘s name, I hadn’t even heard anyone talk above a whisper. We had been intimate, without ever intentionally disclosing any information about ourselves. When I went to get water, I wanted to ask if anyone wanted anything; I imagined us coming together like people do in emergency situations, or The Breakfast Club. However, as sweet as it would have been and although it may have been appreciated, I couldn’t risk the unknown reactions of these people, who I had begun to recognise again, as strangers.

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Eoin embraces the tree of knowledge in a short poem...

I find myself in a clearing.

Bookcases tower over me:
Redwoods in a forest of sublime knowledge.
Silently I wonder through foliage,
Searching for the elusive text;
The forbidden fruit.

I venture past ancient tomes,
Their spines faded and brittle as autumn leaves,
Their contents evergreen.

I take a deep breath;
The musty scent of pine hangs fresh in the air.

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Swipe it. Pause. Swipe again. Pause – then clank, hooray, I’m in!
The stubborn machinery has yielded to my wish, so now I can begin
To think, and find a quiet corner, ON MY OWN
Away from the chabbling children and the mess that we call home.
Away, and striding now, with a newfound confidence
Whooping with pleasure, but in total silence
Lest the librarians look over their specs at me
‘What IS that Mum doing here, at UniVERsity?’
‘She must be over forty, and look at her jeans!’
‘I’m not sure intellectually, that she has the means!’

Pull chair. Pause. Coat off. Pause – then click the mouse, I’m in!
The technology has yielded to my wish, so now I can begin
To read, and travel to another place, as knowledge I seek
Away from the lectures and tutorials every week
Away, and reading now, with books happily by my side
Gasping with pleasure, and bursting with pride
Despite the young students, half of my age
Despite an ex-husband, who, muttered with rage
‘It won’t get you anywhere, it’s a waste of your time’
Well, thanks to the library, I ‘m doing just fine.

Thank you, quiet library. For all your resources
And enabling this Mum, to complete all her courses
Away from the madness of my untidy house
To sit with my books, reading, quiet as a mouse
No need to shout ‘Kids! Get an’ tidy your room!’
Or spend half an hour looking crossly for a broom
Though when asked by Divinity, how I ‘manage’ at home
I rolled my eyes up and let out a groan
And said ‘Look, I know you’ll be appalled,
But I have no house-keeping standards at all!’
Thank you library. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Chairman of the Friends of Aberdeen University Library Executive Committee, Roy Thomson, died suddenly on Sunday 29th November, after taking ill at his home.

Roy was a double graduate of the University, first in 1955 with an honours degree in psychology and then just last year in July 2009 when he gained a Master of Letters with distinction in International Relations and Politics. His thesis, The Scottish constitutional convention, with particular reference to the decision on the electoral system to be used by the Parliament of Scotland, is available online.

Roy had roles in politics, both national and local, charities, the Arts and supporting his University. He was a Liberal councillor on the city council, a founding member of the Aberdeen Mountain Rescue Association and chairman of Mental Health Aberdeen, posts which saw him awarded with the Knight Commander of St John. He had also been chairman of the Scottish Ballet, governor of BBC Scotland, chairman of children’s arts festival Kaleidoscope and the marketing director of the International Youth Festival.

Graham Hunter, who has succeeded Roy as Chairman of the Friends’ Executive Committee paid tribute to Roy Thomson in the following terms:-

"I am sure that all of you, like me, still feel a great sense of shock, loss and regret when faced with the fact of Roy’s death on 29 November last year. Somehow, part of me still expects Roy to come through that door and, quietly and unassumingly, take the Chair and guide us wisely and sensitively through our deliberations."

"Roy was a member of the Friends since at least 1974, and he had been Chairman of the Executive Committee since at least 1993, i.e. for seventeen years, a truly magnificent record of service during which he led the Committee and the Friends with sound good sense and always with good humour. We owe him a great debt and we will miss him…

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